So they continued to move forward for no reason. The passage gradually sloped downward, eventually leading them to an empty tomb chamber, with only a few strange foreign characters written in the style of flying dragons and phoenixes above it - the Tomb of Jisen.
Nan Song stared up at the twisted symbols, his brows knitted together. "This garbled mess... is it a word? Or some kind of curse pattern?"
Bai Di crossed his arms, lost in thought. "The strokes do resemble writing, but I've never seen such a system before. Perhaps it's the language of a lost tribe."
Ma Tuan was originally looking at a piece of glowing moss on the ground. Hearing this, he looked up and glanced at it, and suddenly exclaimed "Huh".
He stood on tiptoe and approached the stone wall, tracing the outline of the symbol with his fingertips and muttering a few obscure syllables.
"Can you understand?" Nan Song raised his eyebrows.
"I didn't realize you knew so many minority languages."
Ma Tuan didn't answer immediately, but suddenly took two steps back with a strange look on his face: "This is... Sklo Zhuyu."
Swallowed his saliva,
"It says 'The Tomb of the Silent Forest'."
"Silent Forest?" Nansong's pupils shrank slightly. "What is that...is it the language of the village just over there?"
Ma Tuan lowered his head and rubbed the corner of his clothes, his voice gradually weakening: "I think... I don't know why I suddenly became proficient in it... It feels so weird."
Bai Di suddenly smiled softly.
This laughter was so rare that Nansong and Ma Tuan were both stunned.
The firelight reflected on his well-defined profile. His almond-shaped eyes narrowed slightly, and between his brows that had been calm for years, there was a hint of vitality that only young people have.
"Why do we need to know the reason?" He gently stroked the strange relief carvings on the ice wall with his fingertips. The twisted lines glowed faintly blue at his touch. "The more you know, the better it will be for us in a place like this, right?"
Before he finished speaking, a tiny "clicking" sound came from deep in the ice track.
The three of them tensed up at the same time.
Bai Di had already turned and walked into the darkness, the torch swaying in his hand, casting a shadow on the ice wall - the shadow suddenly twisted and stretched, and did not resemble a human.
Nansong grabbed Ma Tuan's wrist and said, "Follow closely."
After walking a hundred meters, the ice trail suddenly opens up.
What appeared before my eyes was an upside-down ice crystal palace. Countless translucent staircases floated in the air, defying gravity, connecting misaligned platforms and corridors.
What was even more terrifying was that on each platform there was a kneeling "human figure" covered in ice gauze - they had almost perfect body contours, but extending from the back of their necks were slender bundles of ice crystal nerves, like frozen lightning, all connected to the huge dark red crystal in the center of the dome.
"Is this... a sacrificial site?" Ma Tuan's voice trembled.
Bai Di suddenly raised his hand to extinguish the flames.
In absolute darkness, the crystal began to pulsate. With each beat, those icy nerve bundles transmitted streams of faint blue light, and the kneeling "human figure" twitched.
The one closest to the three suddenly turned around—
It has no facial features.
Beneath the smooth icy shell of his face, densely packed star-shaped pupils were multiplying madly.
"It's lively." Bai Di said softly.
As if in response to his words, the entire palace was suddenly filled with the sound of "clicking" one after another.
All the "humanoids" stood up at the same time, the ice veil shattered, revealing their true form - their torsos were half-melted glaciers, their limbs were made up of constantly reorganizing ice cones, and their heads were completely filled with those proliferating star-shaped pupils.
The sea otter growled as if in warning, and the tumor shrine shrank violently.
Nansong's mental vision instantly expanded to its limit, but when she touched the first monster, she suffered a severe backlash - she "saw" something she shouldn't have seen:
This palace is alive.
Every ice brick is breathing, every step is a synapse, and those monsters are just white blood cells of this huge living body.
They are pouring in from all directions, not to attack, but to assimilate the intruders into part of this ice city...
Ma Tuan suddenly pulled off his half-covered mask.
"Look at me!" he shouted in a rare stern voice.
Nan Song and Bai Di turned around, only to see that Ma Tuan's left eye had turned into a star-shaped shape, exactly the same as the monster's - no wonder he had been half-wearing a mask since returning from the mission. It was rare for the two of them to have the same thoughts.
"Follow my eyes," he croaked. "I know the way."
But at the same time, the sea otter moved.
Ma Tuan was pushed forward by the otter's strong webbed paws, and its icicle-like claws scratched several cracks in his clothes.
He subconsciously struggled - it was too strange to be treated like this in front of Nansong and Bai Di.
"Leave me alone! I can—"
The voice stopped abruptly.
He heard the sound of sesame balls.
The "person" who was supposed to be teaching at the academy was now making movements from the depths of the abyss-like ice palace.
Ma Tuan's whole body froze, and the pupils under the mask suddenly contracted.
(Why are sesame balls here?)
In a trance, he saw huge tentacles swaying slowly in the dark blue water.
Those translucent tentacles, covered with star-shaped suction cups, were reaching out to him in an intimate manner, as if pets that had been separated for a long time had finally found their owner.
"Wait..." Ma Tuan's voice suddenly changed.
The sea otter released his grip and took two steps back.
Nansong and Bai Di approached cautiously, only to see Ma Tuan staggering forward as if possessed by a ghost.
"Ma Tuan!" Nan Song reached out to pull him, but just as her fingertips touched his sleeve, she was suddenly repelled by an invisible force. She looked down in astonishment, discovering a crack in her mental barrier—something was awakening within Ma Tuan.
My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!
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